House Wants the Dirt on CSAR-X

24 Jul 2007

Now its time for the anti-Boeing crowd to fire back in the ongoing CSAR-X cat fight that DT is only too happy to keep tabs on.

According to an email sent to us, the House Appropriations Defense panel inserted language into the fiscal 2008 Pentagon funding bill that called into question the methodology of the CSAR-X decision in favor of Boeings HH-47 Chinook.

The language states:

The Committee is concerned about the selection criteria and process by which this program has proceeded to source selection. The Committee directs the Secretary of the Air Force to submit a report to the congressional defense committees detailing the source selection criteria and how they were established. The report shall include the significant factors for the Request for Proposal (RFP) that determined the source selection, their importance, and how each of the respondents to the RFP was rated against those factors. The report shall be delivered not later than September 15, 2007.

This is all well and good of course...But the irony is it is unlikely the Defense Appropriations bill will be passed by the report deadline. With arguments over Iraq strategy and Gen. Petraeus surge report coming, we doubt Congress will have the comity to pass a hotly-contested defense bill.

Even if we never get the Air Force report, at least one powerful committee in Congress is concerned about the decision and has put that concern into law. In the end, however, the debate may accomplish little other than delaying a much-needed upgrade to one of the most important missions the Air Force has.